Putin and the Thin Line Between Love and Hate
by Aleksander Kolesnichenko
Many who take Russia’s temperature for a living predict the current ardor for its president won't survive a prolonged crisis.
MOSCOW | At the end of 2014, a near-record 85 percent of Russians approved of Vladimir Putin’s performance as president, but they will probably remember the ruble’s fall as the main event of the year. Some Russian sociologists and political analysts are predicting Putin’s rating will drop in the next year or two, and that if oil prices do not rise he could make moves that further deteriorate Moscow’s relationship with the West, exacerbating Russia’s transformation into a besieged fortress.
Russia’s first president, Boris Yeltsin, was at his most popular at the beginning of his career, from his resounding election to the Soviet Congress of People’s Deputies and elevation to the Supreme Soviet in the spring of 1989 to the failed coup of August 1991, when tens of thousands came out to defend him at the Russian White House.
But several years of economic slowdown and high inflation changed all that. By autumn 1993, only 27 percent of respondents told the Public Opinion Foundation they planned to vote for Yeltsin in the next election. By early 1996, that number had dropped to 3 percent.
With the help of state-controlled or friendly media – and, by some accounts, fraud – Yeltsin won the 1996 election, but three years later he left office with the same 3 percent approval rating.
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Read more: www.tol.org
MOSCOW | At the end of 2014, a near-record 85 percent of Russians approved of Vladimir Putin’s performance as president, but they will probably remember the ruble’s fall as the main event of the year. Some Russian sociologists and political analysts are predicting Putin’s rating will drop in the next year or two, and that if oil prices do not rise he could make moves that further deteriorate Moscow’s relationship with the West, exacerbating Russia’s transformation into a besieged fortress.
Russia’s first president, Boris Yeltsin, was at his most popular at the beginning of his career, from his resounding election to the Soviet Congress of People’s Deputies and elevation to the Supreme Soviet in the spring of 1989 to the failed coup of August 1991, when tens of thousands came out to defend him at the Russian White House.
But several years of economic slowdown and high inflation changed all that. By autumn 1993, only 27 percent of respondents told the Public Opinion Foundation they planned to vote for Yeltsin in the next election. By early 1996, that number had dropped to 3 percent.
With the help of state-controlled or friendly media – and, by some accounts, fraud – Yeltsin won the 1996 election, but three years later he left office with the same 3 percent approval rating.
..................
Read more: www.tol.org
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